No.
Gage didn’t look away from the doctor. He saw the sorrow and remorse before he heard the words.
No, no, no.
And then the doctor said the words that would irrevocably change the world as they knew it.
“I’m sorry. We did everything we could.”
Oh, Jesus. Fuck.
Travis tried to take a breath, but someone had replaced the oxygen with shards of glass that rattled around in his lungs, scraping him raw. The pain was unbearable. He could hear the godawful sounds coming out of his throat, but he was helpless to stop them.
God, no. This couldn’t be happening.
Travis stepped toward the doctor.
“We got her prepped for surgery,” the doctor was explaining, “and that was when we realized one of her ribs had pierced her aorta. There was nothing we could do.”
Before he realized what he was doing, Travis fisted the front of the doctor’s scrubs. “Go back in there,” he growled low in his throat. “Go back and fix her.”
A firm but gentle hand was on his. It was the doctor’s and he wasn’t attempting to push Travis off of him.
“I’m so sorry,” the doctor said softly.
Dead.
She couldn’t be dead.
No. Fuck, no.
Someone pried his hands off the doctor’s shirt, urged him back.
Not Kylie.
Travis stumbled, trying to breathe but it hurt.
It should’ve been him, not her. Travis would’ve given his life for hers in a second.
His body was racked with shudders as the sorrow tore through him. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.
He stumbled back until he hit the wall, then slid to the floor, his legs unable to hold him up anymore. Tears flooded his eyes, made it impossible to see. He was aware of the people around him, moving, whispering, someone still talking to the doctor, others trying to console one another.
Didn’t they know it wouldn’t work?
Didn’t they realize that the light had vanished, that the heat from the sun no longer existed because Kylie was dead? Without her in it, the world would be a cold, dark place.
Travis was vaguely aware of guttural cries. It was enough to draw his attention to where Ethan and Beau were attempting to hold Gage up. Travis could feel his husband’s pain, but try as he might, he couldn’t muster the energy to console him. Not right now.
“Travis?”
He turned his attention to the man squatting down beside him.
“Reese and I will find her,” Brantley declared, his voice low and hard, his eyes glittering with rage. “We won’t stop until we do.”
Travis wanted to tell him he’d heard that before, that Brantley’s promises meant nothing. If they’d found her before now, Kylie wouldn’t be dead. If they’d found that bitch and put her in the ground, Travis’s world wouldn’t be flipped off its axis right now. His kids wouldn’t have to live out the rest of their days without their mother.
He didn’t say those things, though. He couldn’t. Right now, the coldness had frozen his vocal cords, made it impossible to speak, to feel, to move.
